As Elections Near, Protesters in Jordan Increasingly Turn Anger Toward the King

Local tribal leaders in southern Jordan waited for a campaign event to begin on Saturday. Parliamentary elections are being held on Wednesday.Credit
Bryan Denton for The New York Times

AMMAN, Jordan — For two years, protests demanding reform here have seethed, fueled by complaints about corruption, incompetent governing and the slow pace of change. In November, deadly demonstrations against a cut in fuel subsidies spread throughout the country.

The widening anger has brought together longtime political opposition figures with those who were once a part of the monarchy’s loyal base. The focus of the protests has also started to broaden, from anger at corrupt officials to bolder expressions of dissatisfaction with King Abdullah II.

To quiet his critics, the king is relying on a new round of parliamentary elections scheduled for Wednesday, a contest that he has promised “will breathe life into our democracy.”

The vote comes as Jordan copes with a number of domestic challenges, including a crushing deficit and a flood of more than 200,000 Syrian refugees — the kinds of crises that have often derailed movements for reform.

However, while the opposition has often seemed more conservative in Jordan than elsewhere in the region — calling for reform rather than the overthrow of the government — it is has shown no sign of easing pressure on the king.

The disillusionment that has fueled the protests is concentrated in the southern city of Ma’an, known for uprisings and phosphate mines.

In the center of town this week, a group of men who had occupied a traffic circle to protest the region’s lack of jobs ate lunch in a tent. Some said they had worked as smugglers, but even that trade had dried up.

“We want to live,” proclaimed graffiti on a sculpture. Beyond it the charred remains of the governor’s residence was visible, set on fire during a recent protest.

The parliamentary campaign in Ma’an has focused on local issues — like winning the region its share of the spoils from the mines — and on the corruption that has become a rallying cry for dissent across the country.

“They don’t see anything from the precious mines,” said Abdul-Karim al-Bahri al-Muhameed, a former civil servant who is running with the support of his tribe. “The king is not serious about getting the money stolen by corruption,” he said.

He sat in the salon of a tribal leader, Sheik Adel al-Muhameed, a supporter of his candidacy who was boycotting the vote. “I don’t trust the Parliament,” he said.

During the last two years, the government had approached tribal leaders like him to try and stop the street protests, Mr. Muhameed said. “The government cannot handle it,” he said. The election, he added, “is a play.”

Citing a history of rigged elections in Jordan that have produced toothless legislatures, many government critics have dismissed Wednesday’s polling as a cosmetic and desperate effort by an absolute monarch to avoid handing over power. A few opposition groups, including the largest, the Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood, and the protest network known as Hirak are boycotting the vote.

Photo

Young supporters of the Islamic Action Front who are boycotting elections follow their party’s demonstration online.Credit
Bryan Denton for The New York Times

“He doesn’t carry out of any of his promises,” said Nimer al-Assaf, the deputy general secretary of the Islamic Action Front, the Brotherhood’s political party. Mr. Assaf predicted that no more than 25 percent of registered voters would turn up at the polls. “People are rejecting the whole idea,” he said.

But other opposition groups are participating in the election, stirring new divides.

Other candidates, to be sure, have put aside their misgivings in the hope that freedom will gradually emerge.

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“Democracy happens in degrees,” said Mohamed al-Hajouj, a Palestinian refugee who is running for Parliament, undeterred by gerrymandered districts that continue to underrepresent the country’s citizens of Palestinian origin, a majority.

Something had to be done, Mr. Hajouj reckoned, likening Jordan to a grenade ready to explode. The elections, he said, would keep it from blowing up.

Jordanian officials say they have added a number of election safeguards to prevent what was seen as a process manipulated by the country’s powerful intelligence services and marred by vote-buying and other fraud.

International and local observers say they have been promised full access to polling stations. In recent days, the authorities have announced investigations into several prominent candidates, including former members of Parliament, on charges of bribery.

In a kind of position paper the king released last Wednesday, he offered his people a civics lesson, discussing the mores of active citizens — including writing letters to the editors of newspapers — and pleaded for compromise in the public discourse.

“To make democracy work,” the king wrote, “it is critical that we debate, discuss and vote on the basis of the positions put forward by the candidates on key issues facing our country, and not the basis of personalities or affinities related to geography or family.”

Among the king’s critics, the effort was ignored or dismissed as a public relations exercise for the benefit of allies like the United States that need to justify their support for him. The system criticized by the king was in fact perpetuated by him, his critics charged. And opposition leaders claimed they already had seen evidence of fraud.

Mr. Assaf, of the Islamic Action Front, said a former government official, whom he refused to name, had offered the party parliamentary seats in return for cooperation with the election. Leaders of another protest movement said intermediaries for the government had approached them with a similar offer.

In any case, the claims — along with accusations of staggering corruption and the cheap sale of public land — foster mistrust of Jordan’s rulers that seems unlikely to vanish with the election. The Brotherhood and leaders of Hirak vowed to keep pressing their claims in the streets.

At a campaign tent in the town of Shobak, near Ma’an, a former member of Parliament, Wasfi Rawashdeh, had come to support a candidate in Wednesday’s vote. A lawmaker with a reputation as principled and tough on corruption, Mr. Rawashdeh said that in his experience it was nearly impossible for the legislature — dominated by government loyalists, as it is and is likely to remain — to be effective.

“We made a difference, but not like we hoped,” he said. “There is pressure on the parliamentarians. No one likes me, from the king on down.”

Mr. Rawashdeh said that Jordan’s rulers still considered democracy an option, not a necessity — something “to show the world.” The king, he said, was not hearing the complaints in Ma’an and elsewhere. “He buys time,” he added, “and it’s not good for the country.”

A version of this article appears in print on January 22, 2013, on Page A8 of the New York edition with the headline: As Elections Near, Protesters in Jordan Increasingly Turn Anger Toward the King. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe